CAROLE KING - TAPESTRY

One definite album that shows you really can't dismiss any genre before listening to the best things it has to offer. Tapestry is totally inoffensive, absolutely and profoundly commercial, undeniably formulaic soft-rock with no claims at innovation or rebellion or shock value, certainly the kind of album that would be seen as the perfect example of the "capitalistic mass production pop-art" serving as opium for the people. As far as "social relevance" goes, it is the complete equivalent of today's Celine Dion or Mariah Carey: a bunch of simple love songs with cliched lyrics and not much of anything hiding below the surface - when the sole piece of 'protesty' social commentary in the form of 'Smackwater Jack' comes along, it is almost laughably out of place.

And yet, Tapestry shows just how irrelevant all these things are in the face of far superior odds - such as melodicity, catchiness, disarming simplicity, and humane, undisguised sincerity. And songwriting indepence, too. Back in 1971, the album finally gave Carole universal acknowledgment as a self-contained performer of her own material, not just a professional Brill Building hack, and that certainly might just have been due to the early Seventies singer-songwriter and soft-rock boom, the same one that made a star out of Carole's pal James Taylor, but the success was deserved anyway. If anything, though, I don't think selecting Tapestry out of the string of the four or five Carole albums of the epoch as the one undisputed masterpiece is really deserved; it may be a wee bit more consistent than some of the others, and boast a couple totally unbeatable pop classics, but if you like it as much as I do, don't make the mistake of ignoring the rest of her stuff.

The good news here is that the production and the playing are unsurpassed - Carole's terrific backing band make even the subpar songs sound delicious. No corny Hollywoodish orchestration a la Carpenters or anything, but strings are used throughout sparsely, with a string quartet on a few tracks. More of that light jazzy touch in places, with Kootch showcasing his training. Great backing vocals, some of them provided by none other than Merry Clayton (you probably remember her singing on 'Gimme Shelter', doncha?). And on top of that, Carole's own singing has improved as she slowly starts gaining more confidence - she now can safely use a more "rip-roaring" approach where necessary, even tackling some gospel-influenced material like 'Way Over Yonder', one of the album's less interesting tracks overall but still totally acceptable in the album's context.

The songs, as far as I'm concerned, differ in quality: for my money, nothing beats the opening triad of 'I Feel The Earth Move', 'So Far Away', and 'It's Too Late', with my personal favourite always alternating between the three. The first of these actually rocks, continuing the tradition of 'Spaceship Races', and you gotta love the way Danny and Carole trade guitar/piano soloing in the instrumental section. The second, with its universally recognized 'doesn't anybody stay in one place any more' line, is among the best ballads ever written, of course; no need for special comments. And I guess the chorus of the third one is common knowledge as well, with Carole's funny rasp - 'it's too late baby now, it's too late, though we really did try to make it...'.

So the bad news is that the album doesn't quite live up to these three openers, but what could? Besides, maybe not all the melodies are instantly memorable, but if anything, Tapestry just gets by with an unsurpassable amount of warmth, energy, and optimism. 'Beautiful' may not be the best song in existence, but it's certainly one of the most optimistic ones, and if listening to Carole singing 'you've got to get up every morning with a smile on your face and show the world all the love in your heart' doesn't make you smile, well I can't help you dude - and I'm not just talking about the lyrics, because I dislike generic preachiness as much as the next guy (actually, more than the next guy), I'm talking about the general sunny feel of the song. If I were to make a compilation of "Classic Songs Guaranteed To Brighten Up Your Day", it'd probably be a toss-up between 'Beautiful' and 'Good Day Sunshine' as the opener (well, all right, maybe throw in a third candidate from the likes of Stevie Wonder).

 So the bad news is that the album doesn't quite live up to these three openers, but what could? Besides, maybe not all the melodies are instantly memorable, but if anything, Tapestry just gets by with an unsurpassable amount of warmth, energy, and optimism. 'Beautiful' may not be the best song in existence, but it's certainly one of the most optimistic ones, and if listening to Carole singing 'you've got to get up every morning with a smile on your face and show the world all the love in your heart' doesn't make you smile, well I can't help you dude - and I'm not just talking about the lyrics, because I dislike generic preachiness as much as the next guy (actually, more than the next guy), I'm talking about the general sunny feel of the song. If I were to make a compilation of "Classic Songs Guaranteed To Brighten Up Your Day", it'd probably be a toss-up between 'Beautiful' and 'Good Day Sunshine' as the opener (well, all right, maybe throw in a third candidate from the likes of Stevie Wonder).

Of course, there's also more sunny pop in 'You've Got A Friend' and '(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman', two classic R&B-style ballads respectively appropriated by James Taylor himself and Aretha Franklin. They're pretty goddang good, but maybe not too exceptional. I myself prefer the jolly upbeat country rock of 'Where You Lead' (with a classic vocal-harmony-trading between Carole and Merry Clayton) and the slightly more troubled atmosphere on 'Will You Love Me Tomorrow?', with both Taylor and Joni Mitchell on backing vocals (marked as "The Mitchell/Taylor Boy-and-Girl Choir" in the liner notes!). I'm also a sucker for 'Smackwater Jack' - that oh-so-Seventies outlaw tale is completely and absolutely out of touch with the rest, but it's good clean fun anyway, and when a song's good clean fun, I actually like seeing it as a 'disruptor'. I mean, if there's eleven songs on an album all written according to the same formula and one written according to a different one (but not any worse by itself), gimme this "disruptive" sequence any time of day.

The recent CD re-issue adds a fine previously unreleased outtake ('Out In The Cold', which could have easily been part of the album) and a superfluous live rendition of 'Smackwater Jack' from mid-1973, as well as a really pretentious James Taylor intro where he raves about how "exceptional was commonplace" back in the days of the Laurel Canyon shenanigan. Judging by his list of suspects, though (The Eagles? Jackson Browne?), I'd add "...and commonplace was not exceptional" to that remark. But never mind, that's just me. Great album anyway, even if HE played on it.